Jindřich Richter

* 1939

  • “And there were the Indians, with the Americans the American, the crew, and there one fell for my mother and because they were leaving soon, in a year they said were going to America, so they would go there too. And she had to go home. So he helped us cross the borders secretly from Germany to the Czech Republic. And he was a fairly highly ranked officer, so he took five jeeps full of soldiers and drove to the border. We sat in the middle with my mother and the officer. There were two other jeeps left and right. And he gave the signal and they started firing at us. Well, there were Russians in the forest, so they returned fire. Now it all turned to the sides where the shooting took place and we went through. And there it was also arranged with a guide.”

  • “The year 1945 came, it was June, and the so-called Red Guards came and the German families drove them all out of the houses and so on. And for three days we laid at the monastery in the park and slept. We were guarded by the Red Guards, who were minions of the Communists and the Russians. Well, then in three days we all had to get up again.”

  • “At the end of the war, in May, the Americans attacked Brno and wanted to bomb today's ZKL, it was Osmarka back then; tanks were repaired there and such. But by some mistake they dropped almost everything here on old Brno. Well, and by an unfortunate coincidence, a lot of my friends from kindergarten suffered, because during the intervention bombs were dropped down on the brewery and the kindergarten was opposite to it. Today there are such blocks of flats. Well, 146 children died there then. They were mostly scalded and died of scalds.”

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    Brno, 24.01.2019

    (audio)
    duration: 36:26
    media recorded in project The Stories of Our Neigbours
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The drunken Russian aimed his pistol at us

Jindřich Richter (en)
Jindřich Richter (en)
photo: PNS

Jindřich Richter was born on June 25, 1939 in Brno to a mixed family. After the annexation of Austria, his father, who was of Austrian descent, had to enlist in the German army. Henry’s older brother was also taken to the Wehrmacht and enlisted in the SS in Hungary, where he suffered burns and died. At the end of the war, the witness narrowly escaped the bombing that killed most of the children from the kindergarten he was attending. In May 1945, he and his mother were expelled from the apartment with other Germans and had to march to Austria. After half a year in a concentration camp, they were moved to Stuttgart, where they lived until 1948. With the help of an American soldier, they managed to return to Brno, where they met their father, who spent several years in Soviet captivity. In the meantime, their apartment in Brno was looted and occupied by another family. In 1958, Jindřich enlisted in the army for technical battalions and subsequently worked in the cement plant.